Basketball boss Mark Cuban donates $1 million to Dallas police ‘to protect LGBT people’ after Orlando mass shooting
The owner of the Dallas Mavericks Basketball team Mark Cuban, has donated a million dollars to police efforts following a hate crime in Orlando during which 49 people were killed in a mass shooting at a gay club on Sunday.
Cuban donated $1 million to the Dallas Police Department, which responded to the shooting at the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Florida, by boosting its counter-terrorism measures.
“I’m proud to be able to help the City of Dallas,” Cuban said in a statement.
“It was the right thing to do and I will do more of it in a future,” Cuban said to CNBC in an email.
The money amounts to around 16,000 hours of overtime for the Dallas Police Department.
The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, thanked the billionaire for “stepping up in a time of need”.
Dallas’ police chief David Brown added: “These funds will be used primarily to protect the LGBT community. We will earmark and track the expenditure of these funds to ensure its effective use in creating a safe environment.”
49 people were killed and 53 injured on Sunday in the shocking terrorist hate crime attack, which saw a gunman open fire inside The Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida.
ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the attack, which was perpetrated by US citizen Omar Mateen. The majority of the victims were Latino.
In a statement, President Obama mourned the victims of the homophobic hate crime attack and called for greater restrictions on arms sales.
In response, Republican nominee Donald Trump said Obama should resign for failing to rally against Islam in his comments.
The attack has been condemned by American Muslim leaders, who addressed ISIS in saying: “You do not speak for us.”
But millions of people around the world have showed solidarity with the victims of the shooting and the community in Orlando,
A GoFundMe page for victims of the Orlando gay club mass shooting on Sunday, was the fastest ever page to reach $1 million, and now stands at more than $4 million.
